Electromote

The Electromote was the world's first vehicle run like a trolleybus, which was first presented to the public on April 29, 1882, by its inventor Dr. Ernst Werner von Siemens in Halensee, a suburb of Berlin, Germany.

[1] In 1847, Siemens told his brother Wilhelm that should he have time and money, he wanted to build himself a carriage with electro-magnetic propulsion.

[3] The track being unimproved and correspondingly bumpy led to malfunctions of the vehicle which in turn contributed to the short duration of the experiment.

[4] The Electromote built by the Siemens & Halske company was a converted four-wheel landau carriage, equipped with two 2.2 kW electric motors, each of which transmitting power directly to one of the rear wheels using a chain drive.

To power the system, Carl Ludwig Frischen, chief engineer of Siemens & Halske, had a power station built in a nearby shed, consisting of a small steam engine hooked up to a dynamo.

World's first trolleybus, Berlin 1882
1893: The area of the experiment on a plan in 1893 (upper right corner). Eleven years later, the area still is only sparsely developed.